


Obligation

by Jadzia_Lupin



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassian Culture, Domestic Cardassia, Family, Garak has a thing for doctors, M/M, Post-Canon Cardassia, Trans Elim Garak, mentions of transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadzia_Lupin/pseuds/Jadzia_Lupin
Summary: Odo’ital had many meanings to Elim Garak. Of course, literally, it meant “nothing” in Kardasi. It was the name of a man who he dared to call his friend. And it also served as a reminder of an obligation that his life was too dangerous for him to fulfill.He still had enemies after the fall of the Obsidian Order, naturally, but as most of those were dead by the end of the Dominion War or otherwise tied up elsewhere, it was no longer too dangerous to fulfill that obligation.
Relationships: Elim Garak/Original Male Character(s), Julian Bashir/Elim Garak (past)
Kudos: 8





	1. Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Garak stalks his estranged child on social media.

Odo’ital had many meanings to Elim Garak. Of course, literally, it meant “nothing” in Kardasi. It was the name of a man who he dared to call his friend. And it also served as a reminder of an obligation that his life had been too dangerous for him to fulfill. 

He still had enemies after the fall of the Obsidian Order, naturally, but as most of those were dead by the end of the Dominion War or otherwise tied up elsewhere, it was no longer too dangerous to fulfill that obligation. 

In the weeks following his return to Cardassia, Garak had been put to work clearing rubble and debris from the streets, occasionally revealing burnt and crushed bodies under the piles. Many were children who’d been playing in the streets when the Founder gave the order to level Cardassian cities. 

On either side of the roads there were entire families desperately digging through the rubble of their homes, searching for important items. There was always someone crying, wailing, weeping. 

Dust and smoke stung Garak’s eyes and burned his throat. His water pouch was empty every half-hour. At least this way, his wet eyes would be seen as irritation and not the cracks in his resolve that they were.

Sorrow filled his chest for Cardassia. For every body pulled from the rubble. For every person digging through the rubble, desperate to find some comfort. This was not the Cardassia he’d wanted to return to; there was no dignity or power here. It was just as alien as Bajor or Earth. It was isolated. Post-apocalyptic. Every day was desperate and grim. Every day when Garak returned to his apartment, he would weep. It was shameful and he never let anyone else suspect, but it was uncontrollable. He regularly wept until his eyes hurt and his head pounded.

He found that he’d never been so lonely. He had very few friends left from his childhood and his Obsidian Order days. His parents’ families would want nothing to do with him; his father’s because he was a bastard and unwelcome in the house of Tain, and his mother’s because he was trans and no longer had his mother to act as an intermediary. Doctor Bashir was only a call away, but radiation in the atmosphere made offworld communication nearly impossible. His fellow workers and community members steered clear of him because of his past. They would whisper among themselves whenever he was nearly. They were certain he couldn’t hear them, and they were right; he could read their lips, however.

For the first time in his life, he realized just how much his own people feared the Order. He’d always been under the impression that every Cardassian viewed the Order with honor and admiration. But these people were terrified of it to the point where they were afraid to speak to him. 

Upon reflection, there really was no reason for him not to know this. He had posed as a civilian enough that he should’ve picked up on that; he’d always labeled Cardassians who feared or even hated the Obsidian Order as criminals and people with things to hide. Based on that generalization, he’d likely sentenced many innocent people to death throughout his career. This troubled him deeply.

Other than whispering about his past, he caught them whispering about how he apparently looked sad and lonely. He cursed himself for being so transparent. 

“If only he had a family,” was one of the more benevolent things people said to one another, “he could go with them and leave us alone.”

The phrase resonated with him deeply, repeating itself on loop for hours as he tried to sleep. 

“You _do_ have a family,” a voice nagged at him from the back of his head as he tossed and turned in his bed, twisting his thick blanket and adjusting himself in uncomfortable position after uncomfortable position.

“No I don’t. Not on Cardassia,” he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to clear his mind. 

“But you do,” the voice whispered, “in Odo’ital.” 

“They’ve probably forgotten me by now, and even if they haven’t, I doubt they want anything to do with me.” Garak insisted. 

“It wouldn’t hurt to go see,” the voice, which Garak had named his ‘Inner Bashir’ at this point, “maybe they’ve forgiven you. Maybe they’ll understand.” 

At this point, Garak decided there was no way he was getting any sleep. He sat up and detangled himself from the bedding before going to the kitchen. 

He didn’t have much food, as famine had stricken most of the planet and the industrial replicators gifted to Cardassia by the Federation could only do so much. Besides, he was only one person; there were millions of other households that needed more. He pulled out an instant _zabu_ stew, adding water and leaving it to soak for ten minutes. 

While he stood there, staring at the unappetizing little dried chunks of faded blue meat and sparse vegetable flakes, he found himself slipping into fantasy. 

He was on a farm in the country, walking through fields of plump green _gi’Lap_ sprouting from vibrant green stalks. He picked the ripest ones and piled them into the basket. 

There was a young girl in a wide-brimmed hat a few rows down, harvesting sugarwheat, humming a lively tune. She had her back to Garak, but he could see her long black hair braided in a loop on her upper back. She was wearing a light purple tunic and white shorts. She was very young; a child, even. 

Then the girl turned towards him, and he saw that she had his face. _No_ Garak shook the fantasy away, pushing it to the back of his head. He grabbed the cup of soaking _zabu_ stew and sat at the table with it, working his spoon through the still-crunchy food. He would never think about that girl. He had no connection to her. They’d never met personally, and she wasn’t missing him. She didn’t even know who he was. That last one caused his heart to break just a little. 

_She_ should _know who I am_ he thought. _She is my child_

This was a truth Garak had denied himself for so long. With the Obsidian Order all but gone, most of his enemies dead, did he really have to deny it any longer? She should be, what, thirteen? Yes. Thirteen. Surely old enough to have some understanding of the situation.

Was he really considering this? His ‘relationship’ with the girl’s other father was little more than a slight indiscretion. A slight indiscretion at a time when he was investigating the family. It meant _nothing_. The girl believed that her aunt and uncle were her parents. There was no reason to complicate her whole life. He wasn’t even close enough to the family to learn what they named her.

His still-dry stew was crushed to crumbs by now with all his stirring around. He stared at it for two full minutes, mind blank, before impulsively standing up and going to the computer. 

_It wouldn’t hurt to check up on her_. He pulled up the Cardassian Social Net, the only social media site on Cardassia that everyone was required to have. Many people didn’t ever use theirs; Garak never did. He hadn’t even been on it since before his exile.

The site opened with an animated image of Cardassia spinning. There was a location search bar at the top and a profile search bar to the right side, and his long-empty personal feed on the left side. Garak selected the location one and typed in “Odo’ital, Akija Kingdom,” and it instantly zoomed in on the small equatorial kingdom, and into the tiny barely-town. The right side of the screen listed off every profile in the town, and the left side was the feed, where every post made by the town’s profiles were. He scrolled through the profiles for a moment, then selected the profile search bar and typed in the surname “Nunnun”, and selected the narrow search parameters “female” and “age 12-16”. Before showing the results, a notice popped up on screen;

“You are a 52-year-old adult about to search for minor children. If you go through with this, the Ministry of Criminal Investigation’s Sex Crimes Department will be notified and will monitor your future activities. Do you still wish to proceed?”

He selected “yes”. That message wasn’t accusing him of anything; he’d never had any desire to perform any sexual acts with or towards a minor; the message was a warning for actual pedophiles, who would be caught. Besides, the Ministry of Criminal Investigation was smart enough to tell the difference between predatory and non-predatory behavior. 

The search yielded two results: a 15-year-old named Aseni, and a 13-year-old named Nystel. His heart skipped a beat. _That’s her_! He selected Nystel’s profile. 

Upon seeing Nystel’s picture, Garak was relieved; she didn’t look like him as he’d feared she would. Sure there were some similarities in her cheeks, nose, and chin, but otherwise, she took after her other father. Her eyes were big and brown, her scales were visibly rougher than Garak’s, and she was much thinner than he’d been at that age. She smiled with large front teeth and wore her red-and-gold _kavet_ uniform, holding a large brown ball in her left arm. Her long black hair was tied up in a ponytail with one single lock hanging down from her forehead.

Then he scrolled down to her bio. “Nystel Nunnun, 13, Tanapre farm girl, athlete, twin,” followed by several links to relief funds for those affected by the Dominion’s bombings and even, surprisingly, two separate links to Bajoran reparation projects. She had 6,043 followers. Garak pressed follow before he could stop himself. It wasn’t like she’d notice one more follower anyway. 

Most of her posts from the last month as well as a few weeks before that were links to funds, projects, petitions, and the brand new Voter Registry, as well as reposts of other people explaining Cardassia’s new democratic system, and posts declaring herself a libertarian and anti-Central-Command and anti-Obsidian-Order.

All posts older than that were entirely apolitical. Just pictures of herself and her _kavet_ team (which she was apparently team leader of), her family (especially her and her “twin brother”), short anecdotes which Garak read in full, and videos of Nystel playing _kavet_ , which Garak watched in their entirety. She was thriving. Garak felt himself smile with pride.

He closed out of the site, his brain now satisfied enough to sleep. He quickly ate his stew, the texture of which was now more consistent with stew, and went back to bed. 

For the next several days, Garak would return to his small apartment after work and scroll through Nystel’s posts, reading her comments, even viewing her liked posts, the majority of which were kavet-related. It made him feel better, seeing his daughter’s social media; he felt like he knew her.

She had dreams of playing kavet professionally, but was generally confined to her tiny town. She was a rambunctious and outgoing person who never backed down from a challenge; she was loud and messy and silly, and she loved her family more than anything.

Garak’s Inner Bashir tried to convince him to message her. But tell her what? What could he possibly say to her that wouldn’t come off as creepy? No. No direct messages, no visiting, no contact of any kind. Only quietly stalking her social media. 

Several weeks after he found her online, she posted something that made him raise an eye ridge. It was about the history behind _The Never Ending Sacrifice_. What he’d always been told that the book was written long before the Central Command came to power, about a family in a small tribe after a natural disaster, but he’d never heard anyone say it was a propaganda-riddled rewrite of a classic story called _The Forever Song_ , which he’d never even heard of. 

According to the article Nystel posted, _The Never Ending Sacrifice_ was written at the beginning of the Central Command era to quell unrest by forcing people to interpret the text in a certain way, with the rewrite supposedly making that interpretation more clear. 

Garak didn’t believe that for a second. He scoffed and closed out of the computer, proceeding to pace back and forth across the room, ranting to himself the importance of that book and generally everything he’d tried telling Bashir all those years ago. He was suddenly angry. How could _his child_ be stupid enough to believe such... _blasphemy_! 

He reopened the computer, found the post again (it appeared to be an extremely popular post), and left a comment detailing why this wasn’t true and how important _The Never Ending Sacrifice_ was to the Cardassian people. Some might even say it represents the backbone of Cardassian culture! To suggest that it was just _propaganda_? Nearly _treason_!

Even after leaving the comment, he remained frustrated. Anyone else saying this wouldn’t be too bad, but the fact that it was _his_ daughter, an otherwise bright child, oh that angered him. Perhaps the worst part was having to wait until the next evening for a possible reply, as it was the middle of the night for her.

After another exhausting day of picking through the rubble, Garak sat down at his computer, and was delighted to find that he had one notification. He clicked on it and found that it was a reply from Nystel on her post.

“Based on your response, I assume you didn’t read the attachment, which is the actual text of _the Forever Song_ , or actually use critical thinking, or look at the sources of the article. If you had, you would’ve realized that it is true, because the evidence is overwhelming. 

I can’t disagree with you when you say _the Never Ending Sacrifice_ is important; it’s one of the best examples of how media can have a huge impact on society. Without it, the Central Command probably wouldn’t have become so powerful. So yeah, it’s important in that respect. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the most important book in all of Cardassian history. If you want books that express true Cardassian culture and not just hollow propaganda, I recommend _The Gilded Girl_ by Avit Kaniot and _None For Us_ by Exi Marritza. Of course, those aren’t the only ones, but they’re good for starting to overcome brainwashing.”

Garak reread the message a few times. He’d never heard of those books or authors, for one thing, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to call her a traitor, as she would block him and they wouldn’t have any kind of relationship, but that was the only thing he really _could_ say; if she weren’t Cardassian, he’d tell her that she was falling into the trap of her own culture’s failings, but he couldn’t do that here.

It was her family’s fault. They’d always been a bit too liberal for his tastes (which was why he was sent to investigate them in the first place); it was one of the only reasons he regretted leaving her with them. 

He decided to read the supposed _Forever Song_ , just to prove her wrong. The story was almost the same as _The Never Ending Sacrifice_ , with added spirituality and drama that had not been in the original. Admittedly, it was far more entertaining and captivating, and took him only four hours to complete, despite being nearly twice as long as _The Never Ending Sacrifice_. Also, the message was far less clear; closer to Earth or Bajoran literature in that the story was generally up to interpretation by the reader. Another significant difference was that _The Forever Song_ wasn’t about service to the State, but service to one’s family. In fact, many parts insisted that the idea of organized government was inherently corrupt and anti-Cardassian. Humoring Nystel’s theory, assuming this one was the original, Garak could see why the Central Command would’ve wanted this book censored to the point where the story was unrecognizable. _The Forever Song_ could’ve very well snuffed out the Central Command in its infancy. 

Garak proceeded to spend the rest of the night dissecting the work, pushing sleep out of his mind to try to find textual evidence that this book was written after _The Never Ending Sacrifice_. When he found that the text was consistent with a pre-Central Command writing style, he returned to the computer and scoured the Cardassian internet and hacked into official government documents, trying to find proof that it was published after _The Never Ending Sacrifice_. He couldn’t find that either. In fact, he found government censorship records about it; according to the Central Command itself, _The Forever Song_ had undergone over a hundred different censorship rewrites within the first 16 years of the Central Command’s existence. First they’d removed any text that was against organized government, then took away religious and spiritual text, and kept removing and changing the text, writing out entire characters and storylines. They didn’t change the name until the 87th rewrite.

He didn’t know how to feel about this new information. It was very shocking, and part of him wished he could unlearn it. _Bashir would be very interested by this_ , he thought, _he must never know_. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep the rest of the night, trying to rationalize the fact that his favorite book was fraudulent, and the original had a message he considered blasphemy. 

At least, _some_ of it he considered blasphemy. There were parts that really struck him.

“A Cardassian has just one obligation,” one of the characters had said in the final chapter. “Just one. All others fade in comparison. That obligation is to his family. To his parents, children, siblings, grandparents. A Cardassian without his family is hardly a Cardassian at all.”


	2. Indiscretion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback of how Garak ended up with a kid in the first place. 
> 
> (14 years ago)

Akija was one of the few Cardassian kingdoms that Garak had never been to before being ordered there, and it wasn’t somewhere he would’ve ever considered going if he wasn’t ordered to go there. There was really nothing physically special about it; it was mostly farmland and the country was landlocked, with a little over half of it spilling over into the Ysggan Desert, which spanned over a third of Cardassia’s surface area. Akija was only a few hundred square kilometers, and only had one major city, Akija’tooral, which had barely a million people. Just like the rest of Cardassia, most people living outside the city were nomadic or semi-nomadic. Though at the time Garak was assigned to investigate the Nunnuns, the Akijans had just rotated for harvest season, so he wouldn’t have to worry about migrating with them as long as the investigation lasted less than seven months, which it surely would. 

Garak had always found the idea of nomadic lifestyle to be tedious and pointless; the only reason Cardassians were ever nomadic in the first place was due to lack of resources and the belief that no mortal person could own anything, and therefore must share everything. But Cardassia was post-scarcity now, so they didn’t _need_ to migrate. Maybe that was just the city child in him. 

When he was assigned to the Nunnun family, specifically Dijat Nunnun, he was told that they were suspected dissidents. The only evidence he’d received was that Dijat Nunnun had been in the city on the day of a dissident meeting that they’d discovered, and only on that day. The Obsidian Order didn’t know who the dissidents were exactly, so everyone was suspect. Garak’s assignment was to go undercover as a traveling farmhand and “find work” at the Nunnuns’ farm.

There were no direct shuttles from Akija’tooral to the town of Odo’ital; the closest he could get was to an almost-city about 30 kilometers away; from there, the only three options were to walk the 30 kilometers, get a personal shuttle, or wait several hours at the transport station for the coordinates of his destination to be approved, as Odo’ital didn’t have a transport depot. Garak chose the personal shuttle, as that was clearly the most desirable option. 

Civilization quickly ceased after leaving the town he’d stopped in; a few more rows of houses, a single shopping center and small park, then the asphalt cut off abruptly, and the car had crossed over into the country. Garak found himself gazing back at the disappearing line of houses longingly as the landscape suddenly turned into endless dusty fields, and the bumpy dirt road shook the shuttle and churned his stomach, and the stench of manure entered the shuttle, burning Garak’s nose enough for his implant to kick in. _Why on Cardassia would anyone choose to live here_? 

The driver glanced at him and chuckled, “don’t come out here often, do you?”

Garak looked up at him and tilted his head, “what makes you say that?” He was sure that his resolve hadn’t broken. 

“The way you were looking back at town,” the young man responded, slowing to stop behind a large skimmer that was being loaded with vegetables on the side of the road. 

“Just a bit homesick,” Garak nodded, “I’m from up north and I won’t be returning for some time.”

“Why’s that?” The vegetable-laden skimmer in front of them slowly started moving, kicking up a lot of dust in the windshield. 

“I’ve been hired to work on a farm in Odo’ital. The pay’s better than I got before, and these folks really need the help.”

“An admirable sacrifice,” the driver nodded as he made their skimmer slowly start moving behind the vegetable skimmer, which was inching along, struggling under its enormous load. 

A large part of Garak wanted to lean out the window and start yelling profanities at the vegetable skimmer, telling it to either move faster or get another damn skimmer. However, they didn’t do that in Akija, not even in the city. “Just go _around_ him,” he grumbled through his teeth. 

“Huh?” The driver looked at him, head tilted. He hadn’t heard him. 

“Just thinking aloud,” Garak gave him a friendly smile. 

“Alright, then.”

After about twenty minutes of moving slower than a slug, the vegetable skimmer turned right down a road, dropping a couple bundles. They didn’t see what the vehicle’s driver did about that, as they instantly sped up.

A few minutes later, they had arrived in Odo’ital. as the skimmer approached, Garak wondered how this could even be considered a town. The driver pulled into the empty parking area, in front of an old worn-down wooden building with a purple curtain for a door and a sign that said “General Store and Entertainment”. There were two young boys poking some dead animal with sticks beside the porch, who proceeded to run when the skimmer pulled up. The General Store and Entertainment building looked about the size of the basement of the house Garak had grown up in, and the only other building in sight was only twice as big and labeled “State Building”, with a side entrance labeled “Hospital”, and outdoor stairs leading to the second floor entrance labeled “Schoolroom”. There was an empty space between the buildings full of empty stalls, which appeared to be a marketplace that was closed at the moment. Other than the boys and a few other people standing around the buildings, talking, the area was entirely deserted.

They got out of the car and the driver helped Garak get his three luggage cases onto the packed dirt ground. Garak thanked the driver as they said their goodbyes. He found himself watching the skimmer disappear down the road. It was official; he was stranded here. 

“Excuse me,” said a voice behind him. 

He turned around to find a young woman, who was about his height and wore a farming hat and short brown dress. “Hello, there.”

“Are you Telik Hol?”

“Yes. I am. And you are?”

“Riska Nunnun. You’re here to work on my family’s farm?” She smiled gently. 

“Yes.”

After a short round of small talk and discussing the weather, which Riska mentioned was perfect for harvesting _ordipa_ root, the two collected Garak’s luggage and began trekking down one of the three dirt roads extending from the public buildings. 

His clothes were covered in a thick layer of sand and dirt by the time they finally arrived at the farm. It was maybe a quarter kilometer out, but Garak felt like he’d been walking for days. There had been only one farm between the public buildings and the Nunnuns’ farmhouse; other than that, fields extended for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. It was hot even by Cardassian standards; at least 60 degrees centigrade. The harsh desert wind blew sand all over the place, stinging his eyes and collecting in the back of his throat. The sand wasn’t abrasive enough to leave any marks on his thick scales, but if he were a Bajoran, his skin would be ripped almost to shreds by now. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but it still wasn’t comfortable. And the _smell_! It was atrocious! The air was heavy with the scents of manure and rotting vegetables. But he didn’t allow any of his discomfort to come to the surface. 

It was funny; he’d been in far worse situations before; situations that had nearly taken his life, where he’d been tortured; he’d been drowned, set on fire, and momentarily exposed to the vacuum of space, but somehow none of those experiences were as unnerving as being in equatorial farmland.

“Here we are!” Riska stopped and turned onto a short road. ‘Road’ was certainly an exaggeration; it was just an uneven, oddly-shaped path meandering through unruly bushes and brambles, rocks, trampled weeds, and footholes dotted the path, daring them to trip as long thorny vines scratched at their ankles. “Watch for the poop,” Riska pointed at a large head-sized pile of animal poop in the middle of the path. 

The old building at the end of the path looked as if it was barely standing. The house itself was long and low, made of crumbling stone and splintering wood beams that looked far to ancient and tired to be structurally sound. The roof was sunken, with nearly all of its metal panels rusted or gone entirely; he spotted a few rusted panels scattered around the thick, weedy yard. The entire house seemed to be uneven, with the left side sunken into the ground up to the middle of the far window. Bleached paint flakes and peeled from the walls; Garak couldn’t tell what color it used to be. A pile of old farm equipment was stacked neatly next to the sunken side of the house, rusted and forgotten.

“It’s prettier on the backside,” the young woman assured him as she stepped off the path and started walking along the side of the house. “Come on. We have to go around; front door’s load bearing.”

Garak’s eye rushes shot up. “ _what_?”

“Some beam broke above it a few years back. We didn’t have the money to fix it, and neither did the other families who cycle through this house. So it’s just been like that. Don’t worry; as long as that door stays closed, the house’ll stay standing.” 

Taking a closer look at the door, Garak noticed the way the warped piece of wood was under a lot of pressure, the doorframe digging into the top and the bottom being pushed down into the wooden floor. He considered giving the Nunnuns some money from his secret inheritance so the house wouldn’t collapse on him. He stepped down off the front porch and into the thorny yard to follow Riska.

The ground dropped significantly on the side of the house; in places it was more like a three-meter cliff, though they were mostly able to walk on a gradual slope. 

There was one thing for certain; the back of the house was, indeed, prettier than the front, though not by much. The back had the same ancient architecture that made Garak nervous to touch, though it was a bit more kept; the entire back of the house was bordered with a light wood porch, which was clearly a recent addition. When they walked up the steps, they found a solid, sturdy foundation. The porch contained several basking chairs and potted plants, and even an eating table. Behind the porch was a kilometer of two of neat rows of crops, with a grazing pasture on the far side of the property, where he could see brown-furred _zabus_ and yellow _rokeds_ eating grass, hiding in the shade, and trotting around playfully. A large barn sat in the corner of the pasture. Closer to the house, a path led from the porch to a small cabin. 

“That’s the farmhand cabin. You’ll be sleeping in there.” Riska nodded towards the cabin as she opened the door. “Come on in! You must be _starving_!” She held the door opened, and he thanked her with a smile when he walked into the house. 

Garak nearly had a heart attack when he took his first step into the house and the floor let out a loud moan, the floorboard giving slightly under his foot. 

There was a laugh in front of him; he looked up and found himself in the kitchen, where a young man, a bit older than Riska, was cooking something that smelled delicious. He had an amused grin on his face as he looked at Garak. He was very handsome, Garak had to admit; his long black hair was tied back into a loose bun, but a few strands still fell free, framing his skinny face. And those _eyes_ ; the deepest brown, and so large, a mischievous twinkle in them. His scales were rough and his ridges sharply defined. Garak straightened himself up, pulling himself entirely into the house.

“Yannis,” Riska shook her head at the man, then turned to Garak, “Telik Hol, this is my brother, Yannis Nunnun, and that over there’s my husband, Aijel, my sister Toli and her husband Porun. There’s our parents, Dijat and Aitoi, and that’s my grandmother Lirnue with my daughter, Aseni.” She gestured to the large family sitting at the inside table. “Everyone, this is Telik Hol, our new farmhand.”

There was a round of welcomes from everyone except the cross-looking elderly woman, Lirnue, and the babbling toddler in her lap, Aseni. Lirnue scanned Garak, obviously not happy with what she saw. “You can go back home,” her labored voice was barely louder than a whisper, “we don’t need you here!”

“ _Mother_ ,” Dijat placed his hand on Lirnue’s shoulder. “We need his help. The harvest is too big for just us this year. Besides, you can’t really go out into the fields anymore.”

“ _Nonsense_!” The old woman, who must’ve been at least 100, turned her sharp gaze to her son. “I have been working on this farm since I was five years old! It is who I am; you can’t confine me to sitting and laying down. It was embarrassing enough to have you carrying me for the migration, I will _not_ be embarrassed further! I am _perfectly capable_ of working out there just as I always have!”

“You can barely _walk_ anymore, Grandmother.” Riska said to her. “We’ve already discussed this.”

“And I’ve already said _no_!” Lirnue banged her fist on the table, rattling plates and making the toddler in her lap stop babbling and look up at her curiously.

A rather uncivil arguement ensued between Lirnue and the rest of the family. Yannis took Garak’s luggage from Riska and guided him outside. “Sorry about that. She’ll calm down in a few minutes.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Garak assured him as they both made their way to the farmhand cabin. 

It was a small but comfortable cabin, with a bed, a table, a dresser, a bookshelf, and a bathroom in the back. Yannis helped Garak unpack and put his things away. In hindsight, maybe Garak should’ve insisted to unpack by himself, because as they unpacked and discussed their interests and pasts, Garak telling his fabricated backstory and Yannis telling his truth, that was when Garak started to fall in love with him.

For one thing, Yannis was a doctor, and Garak kinda had a thing for doctors. Aside from that, he was everything a Cardassian civilian should be; loyal, intelligent, hardworking, eager to please. He had a good sense of humor and something about him made Garak feel safe and cared for. 

But he was here on a mission. He couldn’t get distracted by this beautiful man. 

The assignment went the way most of them did; he observed Dijat Nunnun, covertly obtained information from the family, and searched for any evidence that Dijat was a dissident, while maintaining his cover, of course. 

After three months of this, he had found nothing except for the disturbing fact that he’d gotten used to the country smells. He went to the market every week to attempt to find any co-conspirators, but it seemed that Dijat was innocent. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have determined this after only three months, because at that point, even though Dijat was innocent, he still had to remain for the rest of harvest season to maintain his cover. But he became more comfortable around the Nunnuns; less closed off. He began to have a legitimate interest in their lives; in the gossip that the three siblings regularly took part in, in how Aseni was starting to speak in complete sentences. He could almost forget that he was here on a mission; he felt like part of the family. Dijat’s wife, Aitoi, showed him how to make her famous vole stew. He joked with Yannis when they were tending to the crops. He helped Toli and Porun clean out the barn a few times, listening to them considering whether or not they should start a family; they’d even requested Garak weigh in. 

For the first time in Garak’s life, he felt like a normal person, and not like an Obsidian Order agent. Growing up, he had only been close with his mother, having very few friends due to his studies. Isolation was a constant for him, and for a long time, he was okay with that. That was just the life of the son of the head of the Obsidian Order. But at the Nunnuns’, he felt lonely just sleeping in his cabin, even though he knew he’d be with them again in a few short hours. 

And Yannis. Four months into his assignment, the harvest was in full swing and Garak and Yannis spent hours together at the market. One day when they were packing up, the sun setting and returning the world to dusk, Garak turned to him and asked him if he’d be interested in a relationship. Not in such straightforward terms, of course, but that was basically what he wanted to know. 

Yannis _did_ want to have a relationship with Garak!

When they’d returned that night, and put everything away, they both retired to the farmhand cabin and leapt on each other like a pair of crazed voles.

This was followed by more nights of passion, and eventually Yannis moved into the cabin. 

Garak hadn’t expected a lot of the things that had happened over the past several months, but he certainly hadn’t expected Yannis to be comfortable with him being transgender and still pre-op; it had made many of his past lovers uncomfortable. But Yannis wasn’t uncomfortable; he was perfectly fine with Garak’s body. Garak himself usually felt neutral about it, but Yannis made him positively euphoric. 

But Garak ran into a problem in the sixth month of the season, when he was passing his duds. 

Biologically female Cardassians had to pass their “duds”, or infertile eggs, every few months, usually three or four times a year. The testosterone didn’t stop this from happening; it just prevented fertilization. Or it was supposed to.

Garak had always passed three eggs; every time he’d passed his duds since puberty, it was always three goopy, shellless eggs. But this time, only two slipped out and he felt something hard inside him. He nervously placed his cupped hand under himself and gave an extra push, mind racing, praying that it wasn’t a fertile egg. The thing plopped into his hand and he looked down. 

The egg was small enough to fit in his palm, but it was definitely an egg; the leathery brown shell was wrinkled up and gooey. _Shit_.

 _It’s okay,_ he thought, _it might not be fertile. It might just be a calcified dud_. He gently placed the egg on the counter, cleaned himself up, and hurried back into his room and found a flashlight, then proceeded to place the egg against the light. He cursed under his breath as he saw dark veins within the egg as well as a tiny dark mass on the bottom. No more doubt; it was a baby.

He carefully set the egg in a drawer of his pants before returning to the fields, regaining his composure. He spent the rest of the day trying to decide how to tell Yannis- or if he should tell him at all. His Obsidian Order instincts told him to simply crush the egg; destroy it and pretend it never existed. That was the safest thing to do; allowing this child to exist would be cruel; he had too many enemies and its life would be in constant danger. It would have to be trained the same way he had been; isolated, unable to have the already tiny sliver of childhood Cardassian children were permitted. When it grew up, it would have no choice but to join the Order. 

Surely Yannis wouldn’t want that for his child either. He would want to be involved in its life, but that really wouldn’t be fair to him; not only would Garak have to keep the child close and on the move, but Yannis wasn’t cut out for the kind of life Garak led. 

It would only take one drop into the waste disposal unit and that egg would never hatch. 

But he couldn’t do that. 

It was a baby. _His_ baby. Yannis’ baby. Even Tain himself hadn’t been able to murder his own child. 

But there was no way to keep it alive _and_ give it the safety and security of normalcy, no matter how much Garak wanted to. 

He still showed Yannis the egg that night. The younger man’s face lit up and he gently took it into his hands, tears of joy leaking from his soft brown eyes. “Oh, Telik,” he looked up and met Garak’s eyes with a broad smile, which quickly disappeared when he saw the grim look on Garak’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Garak really did want to keep the child. Maybe that was why he showed Yannis. And maybe that was why he did something he’d never done before in his life: he told the truth. 

Not the whole truth, of course; just that he was an Obsidian Order agent sent to investigate Yannis’ father, and that he really did love him, as well as the rest of the family. He didn’t tell him his real name or any identifying details, though. That was the funny thing about truth; once it starts coming out, it doesn’t stop. And Garak didn’t stop. He told Yannis about how he felt and why the baby shouldn’t be allowed to live, despite his personal feelings. 

Yannis blinked, still processing everything he’d been told, holding the egg close to his heart. “You...”

“You can’t repeat this to _anyone_. Understood?”

He nodded slowly. “I... you can’t kill the baby, Telik. It’s my baby too. I get some say.”

“But there’s no way to keep it safe!”

“We’ll _find_ a way,” fury burned in Yannis’ eyes. He wasn’t going to let Garak hurt the egg. 

“And just _how_ do you propose we do that?” Garak circled him, “I have enemies you can’t even _imagine_. There is not a place in this galaxy we could hide it- _least of all_ on Cardassia!”

“No one has to know.” Gears were turning in Yannis’ head. “Know it’s yours, I mean. Riska’s about to pass her eggs, and she and Aijel have been trying for _months_ ; we could get her to claim this one,” he gestured to the egg, “and register it as their child.”

“ _Ha_!” Garak shook his head. “This child is half Chiore; you’d never be able to pass it off as being Tanapre!”

“It _is_ Tanapre.” Yannis took a step forward. “Maybe only half, but Tanapre genes are dominant.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” Garak nodded and paced. “But how do you suggest we convince Riska and Aijel?”

“Just... just tell them what you told me.”

Garak scoffed and shook his head. “I didn’t even want to tell _you_. No one else will ever know the truth.”

“Well...” Yannis shifted his feet. “Wait a minute.” He met Garak’s eyes, “you’re leaving in about a month!”

“So?”

“ _So_ , you’re not coming back. We tell them that and that you don’t want a child, or that you can’t afford one, and Riska and Aijel should adopt it as their own, as otherwise it would be a bastard. No one else knows it’s yours, or mine for that matter. Your enemies never find out as long as you go on pretending the baby doesn’t exist.”

Garak considered this, surprised at himself for not thinking of it earlier. His own life had always been in danger because of his proximity to Tain. If Mila has adopted him into a different family who had claimed blood relation to him, the danger to his life would’ve been significantly lessened. If he kept his distance from this child, if everything was arranged just so, no one would ever know that it was his. 

The two of them kept the egg a secret, but told Riska the day after it was laid. She agreed to take it as her own. Two days later when she did pass her infertile eggs, she also laid a fertile one. She presented that one and Garak’s to her husband and the rest of the family. Nobody even suspected one wasn’t hers. 

Garak left the farm a month later. The eggs had grown almost three times as big as they were when they were laid, and they could now get scanner readings from the babies inside. One girl, one boy- Yannis had pulled Garak aside later to inform him that the girl was theirs. Garak reminded him to stop thinking of the baby as theirs and start thinking of it as Riska and Aijel’s. 

“You could stay,” Yannis told Garak as he was packing his luggage cases the night before his departure. 

“I can’t. You know this.” Garak arranged his personal hygiene kit and placed it in one of the cases. 

“Leave the Order! You can still claim the egg, and we can get married and have a life together here!”

“The Order is my life, Yannis. Just as this farm is yours.”

“You said you liked it here! That you _wished_ you could stay!”

“Key word being wished.” Garak stacked his books in the case and closed it. “If I left the Order, it could no longer protect me. I have very powerful enemies. No doubt they would come looking for me. And you would get caught in the crosshairs.”

“I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but we are in the middle of gods-help-us nowhere! Not another soul for kilometers! Most Cardassians don’t even know about this place!”

“They are very capable of finding me. Especially if I were to stay in one location for years.”

Yannis sighed and looked away. “I’m sorry. I just...” he chuckled. “I guess it’s true what my mother always says: there’s no such thing as good timing.”

“I suppose not.”

He turned back to Garak, eyes dripping with tears. “I... I-I love... you,... Telik.”

Garak stopped and gave Yannis a genuine smile. “I love you too.”

The next morning, he had to suffer through a long montage of hugs and “goodbye”s. Aitoi gave him a package of fresh _yalta_ cookies for the road. 

When he climbed into the skimmer taking him back to Akija’tooral, Garak found himself looking back at Odo’ital. Once he was back in the city, he decided he should get sterilized, as he should’ve done years ago but never got around to. He waited to get back to the capitol to do so, however. 

After a year or two, he was successfully able to stop thinking about the Nunnuns, and about his child and Yannis.


End file.
